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FULVIA pleading with CONSTANTINE.

And be it so.
(I thank thee, Jove, the trial's worthy of me)
In his own strength, superior to his fortune,
And Cæsar's haughty clemency.
-Lead on.

Maximian shall appear

Fulvia. My father!

Maximian. How that name comes o'er my heart.

She kneels and weeps! Art thou so wondrous good,

Canst thou forgive me, Fulvia; call me father,
And give me back thy love? Did not my rage
Accuse thy innocence, and blast thy fame?
Fulvia. It was ambitious rage, no more remem-

ber'd;

But even ambition shall be satisfied,
Greatness and power, for Constantine hath spoke it;

Fulvia. But, sir, my father, speak; oh! look Duty and love shall wait upon your age,
upon me.

'Till time with lenient hand shall lay it down

Oh! hear these speechless sorrows, hear and pity In honourable death, till fame shall crown

me.

Constantine. With all the fearful tenderness of love,

With eyes that flow in pity, with a tongue
That falters to pronounce it-can I speak it—
The justice of the world demands his fate.
Fulvia. (Kneeling.) Oh, for his sake, the eternal
power of mercy,

Who, when thy great heart's quell'd by age or sickness,

Shall hear thy weakness, hear thy cries of pain,
Give me my father's life! This day has joined
My fame to his misfortunes. Should he perish,
Oh! will it not be said that I betrayed him?
And can you, sir, behold me; can you make me
A name of horrid Parricide for ever?
To all succeeding times, unnumbered ages
Shall curse your Fulvia's memory.

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Your life and that last hour with equal glory. Maximian. If life could pass away in the delight

Of fondly gazing on thee; could the idea
Of that full sway which aw'd the western world
Be ever from my memory, could I forget
I was an emperor once, dispensing fame,
Greatness and honours, round me, then, perhaps,
I might forget I lived to be forgiven,
And bowed me to the power that gave me life.
Constantine. It shall not need-

Maximian. Indeed, my lord, it shall not;
Maximian better shall consult his glory.
Your father, sir, deposed me-not by war,
By the fair fortune of the embattled field,
But by his better arts and skill in treaties-
Arts which I boasted not; but yet it joyed
My gloomy soul to think I should repay them
With equal vengeance. Thence my haughty spirit
Stoop'd to the baseness of a midnight murder.
You now would give me life-to crown that gift,
An honourable share of power and greatness.
Now mark a generosity above thee,
Take from this hand the unrival'd throne of power,
The undivided empire of the world.

[Stabs himself.

For my last groan gives you the universe. Constantine. Oh, Fulvia-but I'll not insult thy

sorrows

By talking comfort to them. Yet remember

Fulvia. Angels of mercy, hear the sacred sounds Why we are placed thus high;-not to exempt us

That bid my father live;

And thou, O Love, in all thy golden records, For it is thine, preserve this act of wonder,

And on thy purple pinions waft it wide

O'er earth and heaven, the glory of thy reign!

Enter MAXIMIAN and AURELIAN.

otherwise decreed,

From human woes, but that the world may learn A nobler fortitude by our example.

To wake the soul to virtue, and impart

A warmer spirit to the languid heart,

The passions were designed; but here behold,
Wild when they rage, by reason uncontrolled,
Less rapid is the storm's destructive sway,

Maximian. (Speaking.) Well, then, the gods have While guilt, remorse, despair, and ruin mark their

way.

HORACE'S EPISTLE TO ARISTIUS FUSCUS
IN PRAISE OF A COUNTRY LIFE.

To Fuscus, who in city sports delights,
A country bard with gentle greetings writes:
In this we differ, but in all beside,
Like twin-born brothers, are our souls allied,
And as a pair of fondly constant doves,
What one dislikes the other disapproves.
You keep the nest, I love the rural mead,
The brook, the mossy rock, and woody glade,
In short, I live and reign whene'er I fly
The joys you vaunt with rapture to the sky,
And like a slave from the priest's service fled,
I nauseate honey'd cakes, and long for bread.

Would you to nature's laws obedience yield;
Would you a house for health or pleasure build,
Where is there such a situation found

As where the country spreads its blessings round?
Where is the intemperate winter less severe?
Or, when the sun ascending fires the year,
Where breathes a milder zephyr to assuage
The Dog-star's fury or the Lion's rage?
Where do less envious cares disturb our rest?
Or are the fields, in nature's colours dress'd,
Less grateful to the smell, or to the sight,
Than the rich floor with inlaid marble bright?
Is water purer from the bursting lead,
Than gently murmuring down its native bed?
Among your columns, rich with various dyes,
Unnatural woods with awkward art arise:
You praise the house whose situation yields
An open prospect to the distant fields;
For Nature, driven out with proud disdain,
All-powerful goddess, will return again,
Return in silent triumph to deride
The weak attempts of luxury and pride.

The man who cannot, with judicious eye,
Discern the fleece that drinks the Tyrian dye
From the pale Latian; yet shall ne'er sustain
A loss so touching, of such heartfelt pain,
As he who can't, with sense of happier kind,
Distinguish truth from falsehood in the mind.
They who in fortune's smiles too much delight,
Shall tremble when the goddess takes her flight;
For if her gifts our fonder passions gain,
The frail possession we resign with pain.

Then fly from grandeur and the haughty great,
The cottage offers a secure retreat,

So he who poverty with horror views,
Nor frugal Nature's bounty knows to use,
Who sells his freedom in exchange for gold
(Freedom for mines of wealth too cheaply sold),
Shall make eternal servitude his fate,
And feel a haughty master's galling weight.

Our fortunes and our shoes are near allied,
Pinched in the strait, we stumble in the wide.
Cheerful and wise, your present lot enjoy,
And on my head your just rebukes employ,
If e'er, forgetful of my former self,
I toil to raise unnecessary pelf.
Gold is the slave or tyrant of the soul,
Unworthy to command, it better brooks control.
These lines behind Vacuna's fane I penn'd,
Sincerely blessed, but that I want my friend.

HORACE'S ADVICE

HOW TO EXCEL AS A POET.

Make the Greek authors your supreme delight,
Read them by day, and study them by night.
"And yet our sires with joy could Plautus hear,
Gay were his jests, his numbers charmed the ear;"
Let me not say too lavishly they praised,
But sure their judgment was full cheaply pleased;
If you or I with taste are haply blessed,
To know a clownish from a courtly jest;
If skilful to discern, when formed with ease,
The modulated sounds are taught to please.
Thespis, inventor of the tragic art,
Carried his vagrant players in a cart;

High o'er the crowd the mimic tribe appeared,
And played and sung, with lees of wine besmeared.
Then Eschylus a decent vizard used,
Built a low stage, the flowing robe diffused,
In language more sublime his actors rage,
And in the graceful buskin tread the stage.
And now the ancient comedy appeared,
Nor without pleasure and applause was heard;
But soon its freedom, rising to excess,
The laws were forced its boldness to suppress,
And when no longer licensed to defame,
It sunk to silence with contempt and shame.
No path to fame our poets left untried,
Nor small their merit, when, with conscious pride,
They scorned to take from Greece the storied theme,

Where you may make that heartfelt bliss your And dared to sing their own domestic fame;

own,

To kings and favourites of kings unknown.
A lordly stag, arm'd with superior force,
Drove from their common field a vanquished horse,
Who for revenge to man his strength enslaved,
Took up his rider, and the bit received;
But though he conquer'd in the martial strife,
He felt his rider's weight, and champed the bit

for life.

With Roman heroes fill the tragic scene,
Or sport with humour in the comic vein.
Nor had the mistress of the world appeared,
More famed for conquest than for wit revered,
Did we not hate the necessary toil

Of slow correction and the painful file.

Illustrious youths with just contempt receive,
Nor let the hardy poem hope to live,
Where time and full correction don't refine

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MORNING.

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In the barn the tenant cock,
Close to Partlet perched on high,
Briskly crows (the shepherd's clock),
Jocund that the morning's nigh.

Swiftly from the mountain's brow
Shadows, nurs'd by night, retire:
And the peeping sunbeam, now,
Paints with gold the village spire.

[John Cunningham was the son of a well- | fitly stand side by side with the known wine merchant of Dublin, and was ductions of Shenstone.] born in that city in 1729. At a very early age, indeed before he completed his twelfth year, his poetical genius began to be apparent, and he wrote several pieces which appeared in the Dublin papers. These displayed such ability that he was soon a hero in at least his own circle, and they are yet occasionally sung by the lower classes of Dublin and its neighbourhood, though the name of the author is unknown to the singer. At the age of seventeen he produced a farce entitled Love in a Mist, which was successful so far as Dublin was concerned, and which Garrick is said to have plagiarized to produce his Lying Valet. Before twenty Cunningham became an itinerant player, in which occupation he passed many of his life. In his wanderings he beyears came closely attached to Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he had always been well received, and which he learned to speak of as his "Home." Thither he retired after leaving the stage in 1763, and there he issued his volume of poems, "chiefly pastoral," a style of composition in which he excelled, and which he was encouraged to cultivate by Shenstone. The book was successful, and highly praised by competent judges. Johnson says of it, "His poems have peculiar sweetness and elegance; his sentiments are generally natural, and his language simple and appropriate to his subject." After protracted suffering the poet died September 18th, 1773, in the forty-fourth year of his age.

Cunningham's poems are much better known than the name of the author. One or other of

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Philomel forsakes the thorn,
Plaintive where she prates at night,
And the lark, to meet the morn,
Soars beyond the shepherd's sight.

From the low-roof'd cottage ridge
See the chatt'ring swallow spring;
Darting through the one-arched bridge,
Quick she dips her dappled wing.

Now the pine-tree's waving top
Gently greets the morning gale:
Kidlings, now, begin to crop
Daisies in the dewy dale.

From the balmy sweets, uncloy'd
(Restless till her task be done),
Now the busy bee's employ'd
Sipping dew before the sun.

Trickling through the creviced rock
Where the limpid stream distils,
Sweet refreshment waits the flock
When 'tis sun-drove from the hills.

Colin, for the promis'd corn
(Ere the harvest hopes are ripe),
Anxious hears the huntsman's horn
Boldly sounding, drown his pipe.

Sweet, -O sweet the warbling throng

On the white emblossom'd spray!
Nature's universal song

Echoes to the rising day.

NOON.

Fervid on the glitt'ring flood,
Now the noontide radiance glows:
Dropping o'er its infant bud,
Not a dewdrop's left the rose.

By the brook the shepherd dines;
From the fierce meridian heat
Sheltered by the branching pines,
Pendent o'er his grassy seat.

Now the flock forsakes the glade,
Where, uncheck'd, the sunbeams fall,
Sure to find a pleasing shade
By the ivy'd abbey wall.
Echo, in her airy round,
O'er the river, rock, and hill,
Cannot catch a single sound
Save the clack of yonder mill.

Cattle court the zephyrs bland,
Where the streamlet wanders cool,
Or with languid silence stand
Midway in the marshy pool.

But from mountain, dell, or stream,
Not a flutt'ring zephyr springs,
Fearful lest the noontide beam
Scorch its soft, its silken wings.

Not a leaf has leave to stir, Nature's lull'd-serene-and still; Quiet e'en the shepherd's cur, Sleeping on the heath-clad hill.

Languid is the landscape round,
Till the fresh descending shower,
Grateful to the thirsty ground,
Raises every fainting flower.

Now the hill-the hedge-is green,
Now the warbler's throat's in tune!
Blithsome is the verdant scene,
Brightened by the beams of noon!

EVENING.

O'er the heath the heifer strays Free; the furrow'd task is done, Now the village windows blaze, Burnished by the setting sun.

Now he hides behind the hill, Sinking from a golden sky. Can the pencil's mimic skill Copy the refulgent dye?

Trudging as the plowmen go
(To the smoking hamlet bound),
Giant-like their shadows grow,
Lengthened o'er the level ground.

Where the rising forest spreads,
Shelter for the lordly dome,
To their high-built airy beds,
See the rooks returning home!

As the lark, with varied tune,
Carols to the evening loud,
Mark the mild resplendent moon
Breaking through a parted cloud!

Now the hermit howlet peeps
From the barn or twisted brake;
And the blue mist swiftly creeps,
Curling on the silver lake.

As the trout in speckled pride Playful from its bosom springs, To the banks a ruffled tide Verges in successive rings.

Tripping through the silken grass,
O'er the path-divided dale,
Mark the rose-complexion'd lass,
With her well-poised milking-pail

Linnets, with unnumber'd notes, And the cuckoo bird with two, Tuning sweet their mellow throats, Bid the setting sun adieu.

THE ANT AND THE CATERPILLAR.

A FABLE.

As an Ant, of his talents superiorly vain,
Was trotting with consequence over the plain,
A Worm, in his progress remarkably slow,
Cry'd "Bless your good worship wherever you

go;

I hope your great mightiness won't take it ill, I pay my respects with a hearty good-will.” With a look of contempt and impertinent pride, "Begone, you vile reptile!" his antship replied; "Go-go and lament your contemptible state, But first-look at me-see my limbs how com

plete!

I guide all my motions with freedom and ease, Run backward and forward, and turn when I

please:

Of Nature (grown weary) you shocking essay!

Good faith, he's so handsome, so witty, and kind, I spurn you thus from me-crawl out of my way." | I'd wed-if I were not too young.

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A wretch, though to-day he's o'erloaded with A youngling, it seems, had been stole from its

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May soar above those that oppress'd him-to- ('Twixt Cupid and Hymen a plot),

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He whispered such soft, pretty things in mine ear! Young Phillis look'd up with a languishing smile,

He flattered, he promised, and swore!

Such trinkets he gave me, such laces and gear,

That, trust me, my pockets ran o'er:

"Kind shepherd," she said, "you mistake;

I laid myself down just to rest me awhile,

But, trust me, have still been awake."

The shepherd took courage, advanc'd with a bow,

Some ballads he bought me, the best he could He placed himself close by her side,

find,

And sweetly their burthen he sung;

And managed the matter, I cannot tell how,
But yesterday made her his bride.

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